The Output is What You Put In, and it Ain't Enough
by mandaree1
Summary: Della bonds with her family via insomnia.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Ducktales!**

**Title: The Output is What You Put In, and it Ain't Enough**

**Summary: Della bonds with her family via insomnia.**

**...**

Della could tell the time by the position of the moon, once. A decade sitting on top of the dang thing had probably left her rusty, but she's still pretty dang competent. That is, of course, if she could look at the moon anymore. The curtains, drawn tight, tell a story Della can't bring herself to say out loud.

But she's still a mom, and an adult duck at that, and she knows from one look at Huey that it's_ Late O'clock_ and he should be sleeping. She opens her mouth to tell him as much, but he beats her to the punch, pointing at the mechanical prosthetic in her hand. "I thought you said you don't need to make any modifications?"

"I don't," she said. "This is more about comfort. Gravity is heavier on Earth, so my- er, _leftover part_\- is grinding against the metal more. I couldn't use much of the chair without ruining my bed in the first place."

Huey sits down next to her, in what Della is fairly sure isn't his chair at the dinner table, and points. "How'd it happen?"

"Got stuck." Della glanced at her work, then held her foot out. "Wanna look? It's nothing crazy complicated, but it works."

He did so, peering into the hole where her leg would've been. "What'd you get stuck under?"

"The Spear."

"Did it cut it off at the joint, or did you do that yourself?"

"...Okay, I'mma be real a sec? Beakley gave me a talk about not being 'too dark' when talking about stuff with you kids, and you're heading towards some pitch black territory there, my man."

Huey blinks at her expectantly.

Della laughs a little. Yup. Her son. "I did it myself."

The oldest triplet runs his fingers across old metal. It's not a smooth journey. Far from it, really- there's bumps and crevices, little dings from mistakes or falls or simply her throwing the thing out of frustration. But it's held this long, and Della suspects it'll hold for many years yet. "When we were little, and the rings holding the sail would hit the mast, it'd make me cringe. I hated it. But then I grew to love it, and it took me ages to get used to sleeping without it. I think this is like that."

_My foot, or me?_ Della thinks. Her brow furrows. "Sounds like you spent a lot of time on Uncle Scrooge's boat." Huey winces, and Della, fearing she may have made him feel self-conscious, continues. "Hey, that's okay! Donald used to _love_ sleeping at sea. I can't tell you the number of times I had a nap in the cockpit of the Cloudslayer, too."

"It's..." Huey says, and pauses, and hands her her foot back. "I think that's something you need to talk to Scrooge about."

"...My weird sleeping habits?"

"The boat. It's his story to tell."

"It's never a good sign when people tell me to talk to him about 'his story'," Della gripes, but doesn't press. Those conversations usually hurt, and she could at least yell swear words at Scrooge. Not so much Huey. "Thanks for telling me, honey."

Huey bites his lip, considering. Della shoves some old cloth into the leg and tests it out- she hopes, with proper tinkering, she can fit something soft inside without having to redo the entire joint to make room. She hopes her sons will learn to talk to her. She hopes she'll stop chewing holes into her cheeks.

"Ten years is a long time," he says finally.

"That it is."

"Did you... ever give up?"

Della wants to say something brave and bold, something that will ultimately get her respect. Wants to stand up and shout _of course not! I'm Della Duck!_ But she remembers being Huey's age and hating when adults lied. Also, her foot is off, and she's not interested in finding out how much Earth gravity will hurt her tonight. "I did. A lot, actually. I'd try to celebrate your birthday every year, and all I could ever think was- _wow_, you've said your first words by now. _Wow_, you're definitely walking by now. _Wow_, you're in school now. And it was... so_ hard_."

Huey looks... not _happy_, but pacified. Reminded that no one is perfect, even the woman he's assumed was dead for ten years and managed to claw her way back to Earth with grit and gross gum. "What made you change your mind?"

"I mean, what else was I supposed to do? It was all I had on the moon. Well, besides pondering my mortality and sleeping. I did a lot of the sleeping. I'd wake up feeling sorry for myself, but then I'd get bored, or I'd see the drawing I made of you boys, and I'd remember exactly what I needed to do."

"I'm sorry you went through that," he said carefully, as if afraid it would cause her to freak out.

Della shrugged. "I'm sorry I left you."

* * *

She doesn't see Dewey much at home. Well, that's not quite right- Della sees him plenty. He's just got an itch in his pants, is all. A need for speed. He's not interested in sitting still or watching her fix mechanical legs or discussing the harsh realities of lunar survival. _And that's okay_. Della loves that he's so full of energy and light that he just _has_ to spread it _everywhere_.

The same cannot be said of her youngest, Louie, who seems very attached to the TV. It's not hard to find him for that reason alone- hear a consistent buzz of noise? Boom! There's Louie. Which is great after a long day of adventuring and Woodchuck-ing with her others boys, because she can just plop down on the couch beside him and relax.

Louie jumps as if broken out of a trance, shocked. "Oh. Uh. Hi?"

"Hey, kiddo," she says in what she can only hope isn't a_ my-everything-is-sore-Earth-gravity-sucks_ voice. "How was your day?"

"Fine?" He stares a bit longer, as if expecting her to disappear. Della doesn't. "Do you... wanna watch something else?"

She cracks an eye. Della's been here long enough by now to know that getting the remote from Louie is like fighting a lion with a toothpick. Having the privilege offered so freely was a big gesture on his part. "_Nah_. I've got a decade's worth of 'tube to catch up on- what better way to get back into it than with the Louie Duck Grand Tour?"

"I've got the entire first season of Ottoman Empire recorded. If... you know. You want."

"I have no idea what that is," Della says. "I'm in."

What follows is a binge that lasts a couple of days. It's not _all_ about the chairs- sometimes they flip into a video or scene that they're referencing, Della watching with rapture at how far films have come. CGI was looking pretty great, when used appropriately. Louie talks with waving hands and vivid expressions, regardless of how tired he becomes, and Della does her best to soak it all up. And when, eventually, he curls up against her side, Della rubs his shoulder and tries not to cry.

Out of the clear blue, about midway through season twelve, Louie looks her dead in the eye and says, with the kind of quivering voice that makes her want to punch whoever hurt him in the face; "You think I'm lazy, don't you?"

"What?"

"For not going on adventures with you guys. I'm just not into that stuff without getting something out of it, you know? What's the point of climbing a volcano if there's no gold at the end? To stare at some dead guys?"

"Gold _is_ pretty sparkly," Della agrees, though she's personally lost any love for the stuff. "Listen, Louie. Everyone adventures for different reasons. If your reason is money, then that's okay."

"Uncle Scrooge-"

"Uncle Scrooge is a lame old fuddy-duddy who likes to think that everything was better 'back in his day'. But y'know what? It was his adventures and the advancements around him that made him rich,_ not_ some lame life advice from the back of a card." Della waves the notion off with a snort. "If he ever gets on you, you just tell me, alright? I'll beat him with my foot. Or I'll give _you_ my foot to beat him with. Whichever."

"But I don't _do_ anything," he stressed. "I just sit at home and watch TV."

"Dude, you just spent three days analyzing how Johnny and Randy are time-travelers in disguise. You had notes and evidence and everything."

"That's just lame theory stuff."

"It's using your noggin." Della poked the side of his skull. "I know I don't know you very well yet, but you seem pretty smart to me, kiddo. And if you wanna use your smarts for theories and gold, then go for it! I once spent a whole summer teaching myself calligraphy because one of my tutors wouldn't get off my back about my handwriting. I used it _once_, to draw a middle finger and sign it, and it's done me no good since. If Scrooge wants to drink rock soup and sleep on potato sacks that's fine, but there's no reason to deny someone something they love to do."

Louie squints at her an agonisingly long moment, and Della tries to decipher what kind of theories he must have about her. "You're weird," he says eventually, with this half-snort, half-chuckle that Della already loves more than life itself. "That's cool."

* * *

Webby is _sort of_ hers and_ sort of_ not. The boys have definitely laid claim to her, which is sweet and endearing, but Della doesn't have to be the smartest duck in the world to notice the sort of gruff, displeased way Beakley speaks of her. Logic tells her she's probably mad at her- she'd been friends with Scrooge longer'n Della has been alive, and losing her had supposedly ripped his heart out. Which. Yeah. That's fair.

(Not that it matters. Della would never be half the maternal figure Agent 22 was.)

It's a bit of a mess, and Della, ever the mature woman who is definitely capable of being an adult, decides to ignore it. That works, hmmm... maybe two weeks? And then she goes to steal one of Louie's PeP cans, and she kicks the fridge door shut with her foot, and there's Lena. Staring ominously.

"Phooey!" Della shrieks, which is only a waggle of the tongue away from what she'd wanted to say. "Cheese and crackers, kiddo. I almost knocked you into next week."

Lena crosses her arms and leans on the fridge. "You haven't talked to Webby."

She cracked the can to give her heart some time to chill out. Della hadn't been kidding about responding to physical violence- the teenager was lucky she hadn't been hit with said can- and she needed to get her bearings back under her. "I was letting her come to me," she said finally. "It's safer for my health if I don't cross 22."

"She has a board."

"I'm flattered."

Lena let out a long sigh and pinched the bridge of her beak. "Look. I don't trust you. I don't trust any adults who disappear for over a decade and then pop back up. Call it a self-preservation instinct. But Webby likes you, and Vi outvoted me, the little nerd, so this is happening." She grabbed Della's wrist and led her out of the kitchen. "Interview time. Also, doesn't PeP have caffeine? 'Cause it's, like, ten at night."

"I'm aware of all these things," Della said, and took a swig to hide her smile.

* * *

"Scrooge, you're hovering."

"How cannae not?" Scrooge waved his hands as he paces right behind the couch. Della, wrapping her hand, rolls her eyes. The old bird has been shifting rapid-fire between scolding parent and doting uncle ever since she came home, and this was clearly a latter moment. "Ye're bleeding out!"

"I was cutting an apple, Uncle Scrooge. Relax."

"The Della Duck_ I_ know would never slip a pairing knife!"

"The Della Duck _you_ know didn't spend ten years on a planet that lacked apples to cut." She held up the bandage with a cheeky grin. "See? All better."

Scrooge sighed. Sighed again. It was hard for Della to properly describe the amount of sighing going on as the trillionaire slumped against the couch, every year written in the wrinkles and folds and bent feathers, but_ excessive_ is on the list somewhere. "Ye cannae keep doin' this to me, lass."

"Scrooge, I will personally pluck every feather from my head before I stop eating food I have to cut. Any food, really."

He shakes his head. "I haven't seen yew go to bed since you came back."

"Oh. That." Della mutters some numbers under her breath as she glances at her fingers. "I'd say it's been about... a week? Yeah, that sounds about right."

"A _week_?"

"I mean, I took catnaps."

"Della."

"Don't I'm-not-mad-just-disappointed me, old man." She poked him in the chest, hoping against all odds that they'll find something to make them drop the topic. "I haven't exactly seen you go to bed, either."

"_I_ have an in with the Sandman."

"And _I_ have a decade's worth of practice."

Scrooge grumbles something under his breath and sank down into the couch cushions. It's easy to forget that he's not exactly a tall man by nature, standing proud in statues and news articles, but right now he's an emotionally constipated codger trying to get his adult niece to go to bed. "It's just... I'm scared."

Della felt her jaw drop. "Did you... just admit to feeling fear? I didn't think I could ever pull that outta you, Uncle Scrooge."

He shrugged and tapped his thumbs together. "I just gotcha back, lass. I don't want to go to bed and find out it was one helluva dream."

Any attempt of joviality disappeared as she stared at her feet. Her fingers, digging into the soft fabric of the couch, were all that was between her and sinking into numerous angsty flashbacks. Della didn't want to think about that right now. Ever, preferably. "I get what you mean."

"Alright, that settles it." In a flash Scrooge McDuck was on his feet again. "I know we're both a bit old fer this, but how 'bout we bunk for the night? There's plenty'a room in my bed."

"I remember. It's a sea of comfort." Della bit her bill, considering. "Are you sure? I've not slept next to someone in a long time. I'll either hog the bed or-"

"An' I haven't shared a bed in a long time. I'm jus' as likely ta' attack yew." He held out a hand. "Whattaya say?"

Della took it. "Anything is better than another night watching Beakley knit."

**Author's Note: There isn't much overarching stuff going on here, but I wanted to write Della interacting with characters. **

**-Mandaree1**


End file.
